In a single-room short term rental flat just outside the Gambian capital, former Senegalese talk show host Abdoulaye Konate speaks softly, almost in a whisper. He’s in The Gambia to meet his family who travel across the border to meet him because he’s in exile and cannot return to Dakar. His voice once carried across the airwaves of Dakar in Senegal, bold and unwavering. Now it’s cautious, measured, the voice of a man in hiding.
Konate, 42, is a journalist, a father and until recently, a popular community radio host in the Senegalese capital. But for the past FIVE years, he’s been living in exile in the United States. His offence? Using his platform to speak out against female genital mutilation (FGM), a centuries-old rite that remains widespread despite Senegal’s 1999 ban.
“I knew it was dangerous,” he says, recalling the first time he dedicated his nightly show on Djida FM to the subject. “But I never expected that they would want me dead.”
A taboo broken on air
In communities like Konate’s, FGM is not just tradition. It’s identity. A girl who has not been cut risks being ostracised. A man who questions the practice, Konate would soon learn, risks everything.
“I grew up hearing that FGM was religious,” he says. “But nothing in Islam says to mutilate our daughters. That’s cultural violence, not faith.”
Konate’s awakening came gradually, after years working as a fixer and translator for international journalists reporting on gender-based violence in West Africa. When he took up a job as a presenter at Djida FM, a station part-owned by local elders of his Serahule community, he used his evening show to raise thorny issues: corruption, child marriage, education for girls and eventually FGM.
Listeners began calling in. Some challenged him. Others thanked him. One woman, whose daughter nearly died from complications after being cut, broke down while speaking to him on the phone at the end of his radio show. That night, Konate knew there was no going back.
“I wasn’t trying to be a hero,” he says. “I just wanted the truth to be heard.”
But truth-telling around FGM came at a price. Within weeks, threats and veiled warnings began pouring in.
“I’d go home and find people loitering near my gate. A neighbour told me I should ‘make peace with God’ because my days were numbered.”
Konate’s employers and colleagues became uneasy and stressed out. He felt he was a problem for everyone at the radio. As a result, he quietly put his show on hold and restricted himself to his family home in the Parcelles Assainies municipality of Dakar. Eventually he left for the US.
“I left my mother in tears. But she understood. She was the first person I told I was against FGM.”
Law without enforcement
Despite a two-decade-old law banning the practice, FGM remains widespread in parts of Senegal. According to UNICEF, over a quarter of women aged 15 to 49 in those parts of Senegal have undergone some form of genital cutting.
Prosecutions are rare, and the law is often enforced selectively, if at all.
“Legislation alone won’t end FGM,” says a former campaigner with Tostan, a grassroots NGO working to end the practice. “What’s missing is community-level education, dialogue and support for whistleblowers. Instead, we are seeing people like Konate forced underground.”
Now running a cap business in New York, Konate remains defiant. He still uses his influence to preach against FGM, though to people he trust. He’s still afraid.
“I miss radio,” he says. “I miss speaking to my people. But my voice hasn’t disappeared. It’s just travelling a different way now.”
Asked if he ever regrets his decision, he pauses, then shakes his head.
“If I kept silent, I would be safe. But girls would still be cut. Maybe even my daughter. I couldn’t live with that.”
He glances down at his phone, then quietly adds, “I was just the microphone. The message is bigger than me.”
